[Multilateralism in Action] All 12 exciting think-pieces of 2024

Dear Readers,

In 2024, the Multilateralism for Action blog has once again served as a vital platform for exploring the evolving landscape of international cooperation and global governance. This year's contributions have delved into pressing issues facing the United Nations and other multilateral institutions, offering fresh perspectives on how to address complex global challenges in an increasingly interconnected world.

As we reflect on the insights gleaned from this year's articles, it becomes clear that effective multilateralism requires not only institutional adaptability but also a willingness to confront political realities and embrace diverse stakeholder engagement. The MiA blog continues to be an indispensable resource for those seeking to understand and shape the future of global cooperation in an era of complex, transnational challenges.

Browse the 2024 think-pieces in the following categories:

1. Multilateralism, Peace & Security 
2. Multilateralism & Sustainable Development
3. Multilateralism, International Law & UN Reform 
4. Multilateralism & Refugees 

2025 will provide its own challenges and opportunities for multilateral cooperation. Some are already visible - others are still unknown. At Multilateralism for Action we are ready to address, explore, and suggest how multilateralism can work better and achieve meaningful results. Thank you for engaging with our content and we look forward to your readership and interesting discussions. 

Happy New Year!

Daniel Naujoks
Editor, Multilateralism for Action & the entire MiA team:
Laura Dankowski Mercado, Hannah Barry, Paloma Camelo, Hanh Angela To, and Himadri Ratnayake

Peacekeeping Caught in the Geopolitical Crossfire: MINUSMA and beyond

By J. Arthur Boutellis
December 2024

How international interveners cooperate: The UN and the International Criminal Court

By Tom Buitelaar
December 2024

Who is Behind the Expansion of UN Peacekeeping Mandates?

By Kseniya Oksamytna 
April 2024

Drawing on her award-winning book Advocacy and Change in International Organizations: Communication, Protection,  and Reconstruction in UN Peacekeeping (Oxford University Press, 2023), Kseniya Oksamytna, Senior Lecturer at City University of London, examines the evolution of expanded UN Peacekeeping mandates over the last 35 years. Tracing the evolution of three agendas in UN peacekeeping: public information and strategic communications, protection of civilians, and quick impact projects Oksamytna shows how advocacy by key individuals drove this process: diplomats, bureaucrats, and experts. New agendas emerge through bottom-up innovation by international bureaucrats, outside-in advice by experts, and top-down issue construction in intergovernmental forums. However, the emergence and institutionalization of new issues require skillful, sometimes multi-year advocacy by dedicated diplomats, officials, or experts.

South-South Cooperation: A Pathway to a Sustainable and Inclusive Future

By Dima Al-Khatib 
September 2024

Universalizing UN Development: A
Forgotten Task for Effective Multilateralism

By Max-Otto Baumann & Adolf Kloke-Lesch
October 2024

In this piece, Max-Otto Baumann, senior researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability and Adolf Kloke-Lesch, former Director General of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and former Executive Director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) Germany, argue that the UN must strengthen operational cooperation within high-income countries to achieve a universal development agenda, rather than exclusively focusing on development activities within low-income countries.  With growing pressure on planetary boundaries, interlinkages between countries (including through spillover effects), and the “blurring of North-South boundaries”, the need for sustainable development can no longer be seen as a function of a country’s (lower) income status. In addition, there is a political need for a new global governance, marked by equal relations and mutual accountability of UN member states. They argue that the present UN development system operates as a shadow of the traditional development cooperation regime, which is based on the concept that one group of countries has the problems and the other the solutions.  

Multilateral Action for Country-led Climate and Energy Financing 

By Thomas Beloe & Christopher Lilyblad 
November 2024

Thomas Beloe, Director of UNDP’s Sustainable Finance Hub and Christopher Lilyblad, SDG Finance and NDCs Policy Specialist at UNDP, argue that despite a growing recognition of the inexorable link between financing and the achievement of the Paris Agreement’s climate targets, emerging economies face difficulties generating the financing needed for climate action and investments in renewable energy. There is a need for systemic change to build a sustainable financial architecture and to link Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement with endeavors to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Open access to training in sustainable finance through UNDP’s SDG Finance Academy demonstrates how the knowledge developed through multilateral action can be shared as a global public good. International financial institutions (IFIs) have a crucial role to play, including as “impact multipliers,” collaborating with investors and insurers to de-risk investments in sustainable energy and climate-smart initiatives. IFIs must join in the multilateral, multi-disciplinary commitment to build a sustainable finance architecture that benefits all people and the planet. This is particularly relevant in preparation of the 2025 4th International Conference on Financing for Development. 

Generating Compliance with Multilateral Treaties: What are the Best Mechanisms?

By Caroline Foster and Christina Voigt
December 2024

International law abounds with treaties; yet effective implementation and compliance are recurring challenges. Beyond formal dispute resolution processes, especially through international courts and tribunals, in recent years, many international treaties have established ‘in-house’ non-compliance mechanisms (NCMs) or other treaty bodies to help bring about implementation and promote parties’ compliance with their obligations. Caroline Foster, professor of international law at the University of Auckland and Christina Voigt, full professor of law at the University of Oslo show that highly developed NCMs are used across a wide spectrum of international law, including in environment, trade, finance, disarmament, international criminal law, humanitarian and human rights law, as well as the law of the sea. Based on their edited book 𝐼𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝐶𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑡𝑠 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑁𝑜𝑛-𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑀𝑒𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑠𝑚𝑠: 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝐴𝑑𝑣𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑆𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑦 𝐼𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Foster and Voigt elaborate on the the advantages of NCMs, their legitimacy and under what circumstances they work best. Overall, they show that NCMs offer a legitimate mode and means to help bring about treaty compliance and thus make international law more effective.

A Second United Nations Charter: Politically Impossible or Inevitable?

By Augusto Lopez-Claros 
October 2024

The United Nations urgently needs reform to address global challenges in an increasingly dangerous world. Augusto Lopez-Claros proposes a "Second UN Charter," developed over two years, to update the UN's structure and capabilities for the 21st century. This proposal aims to better reflect the current global landscape and tackle pressing issues such as security threats, climate change, and technological advancements. Key elements of the proposed Second Charter include expanding the Security Council from 15 to 25 members, creating a Parliamentary Assembly to represent people alongside states, establishing an Earth System Council for environmental governance, reforming the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and granting compulsory jurisdiction to the International Court of Justice. While reforming the UN is challenging, the benefits of addressing global risks outweigh the costs. Lopez-Claros calls for invoking Article 109 of the current UN Charter to initiate this reform process to make international cooperation more networked, fair, and inclusive in the face of multiple global catastrophic risks. 

How Funding Sidelined Multilateralism at the United Nations: Then, Now, and Possible Futures

By Erin R. Graham 
March 2024

Erin R. Graham, Associate Professor of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs explains how UN funding policies and practices evolved to reach their current state of heavy reliance on earmarked contributions. Drawing on her book, Transforming International Institutions: How Money Quietly Sidelined Multilateralism at the United Nations (Oxford University Press, 2023), Graham provides a history of the UN’s funding trajectory from its founding to the contemporary period and outlines the implications of these developments for the character and governance of the UN system. Contrary to common depictions, the transition to heavy reliance on earmarked funding began a lot earlier than the 1990s. Initially, changes were intended to allow states to supplement their non earmarked contributions to UN programs to enable the UN to expand its work. However, the same rules were repurposed decades later as a substitute for unearmarked resources, to constrain the UN’s work. Graham urges UN observers to integrate the contemporary funding landscape into their understanding of how the UN operates and who exerts influence. 

The Pact for the Future ... of Multilateralism? A Long Road Ahead to Global Governance Reform

In September 2024, the UN General Assembly adopted the long-awaited ‘Pact for the Future.’ Hannah Barry reflects on SIPA’s inaugural State of the World conference that discussed how the agreement’s ambitious commitments and promises can be translated into concrete action. Based on the discusion--which involved Jean-Marie Guéhenno, SIPA Professor and former UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping; Michèle Griffin, Director of the Summit of the Future at the UN Secretary-General’s Executive Office; Augusto Lopez-Claros, Executive Director of the Global Governance Forum; and Saru Duckworth, MPA in Development Practice Candidate 2025 at SIPA and Next Generation Fellow at the UN Foundation--Barry concludes that the Pact is just the beginning of the world’s discussion on multilateral reform. It will require continuous and comprehensive stakeholder consultation during implementation and may need to be further reinforced by a legally binding UN Charter reform. Either way, the Pact for the Future has legitimized the pervasive need for multilateral reform, which has given (most) Member States at least one thing to agree on. 

When Evidence Meets Power: Uncovering the Politics of Evaluation in the United Nations

By Vytautas Jankauskas & Steffen Eckhard
February 2024

In their think-piece, When Evidence Meets Power: Uncovering the Politics of Evaluation in the United Nations, professors Vytautas Jankauskas and Steffen Eckhard delve into the intricacies of the evaluation processes within international organizations (IO). Drawing on their new book, The Politics of Evaluation in International Organizations (Oxford University Press, 2023) the authors argue that evaluation is not a value-free, purely technocratic endeavor; rather, it is innately political. Jankauskas and Eckhard argue that institutional designs that balance control between member states and IO management, alongside clearer guidelines for recommendation foster more impartial and effective evaluation systems, enhance the credibility and utility of evaluation reports, bolster evidence-based policymaking, and ultimately advancing the UN's mission towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. 

A New Multilateralism for an Old Problem: Five Ways in which the Global Refugee Forum brings a Fresh Way of Responding to Refugee Situations

By Ruven Menikdiwela 
March 2024

Ruven Menikdiwela, UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, shares her reflections on the December 2023 Global Refugee Forum. In the context of a dysfunctional international global order, waning attention to crisis, and deep polarization - particularly around issues of human mobility - the Global Refugee Forum went against the tide, proving to be a ‘groundbreaking moment of action, unity and impact.’ Menikdiwela shares five ingredients that helped make the Global Refugee Forum a success for international cooperation, solidarity, and renewed multilateralism.

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